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I've never been quite able to grasp the logic of those people who think that, while the War on Drugs is a bad idea, the FDA being able to ban whatever drugs it

I've never been quite able to grasp the logic of those people who think that, while the War on Drugs is a bad idea, the FDA being able to ban whatever drugs it likes is a good idea. Either the government should have the power to ban drugs or it shouldn't, but too many people seem to want it both ways: prohibition without enforcement.

vkou 10y ago
The FDA bans drugs from making unverified medical claims. That's the raison d'etre for its existence. Given the circumstances, they do a pretty damn good job of this. You can put whatever the hell you want in your non-FDA-approved snake oil supplement - but then you won't have the legitimacy of the medical establishment behind you. This legitimacy depends on your drug having verifiable, understood effects. You can't have it both ways.
- snrplfth 10y ago
  Well, they still destroy unapproved drugs at the border and raid places like whole milk producers and nutritional supplement makers. It's not exactly "caveat emptor" over at the FDA. My point is really that, if somebody's solution to the problem of people overdosing on drugs is to ban them or prohibit access, then they're defacto acquiescing to the tools that make the War on Drugs possible. People seem to expect drugs they don't like to just "go away", without any of the nasty raiding and shooting.
  - vkou 10y ago
    There are plenty of snake oil manufacturers who manage to operate within the boundaries of the law. Those don't get raided. The milk salesman wasn't raided for selling whole milk. He was raided for selling unpasteurized milk... Across state lines. Generally speaking, clearing the bar for FDA tolerance of nutritional supplements is quite easy. They don't care that your product works, only that you don't put actively dangerous things in it. It's caveat emptor for efficiency, but not for safety - which is a pretty reasonable place to draw the line.
    - snrplfth 10y ago
      I understand that, yes. But what I am saying is that, even with a "safety" criterion, the War on Drugs is completely prosecutable. Heck, alcohol is dangerous as hell, as evidenced by the number of deaths it precipitates. There is nearly always a safety criterion that can be thought up for "products for personal consumption" (as opposed to, say, environmental pollutants) You can have prohibition of "unsafe substances", or you can have an end to the War on Drugs. I don't think you can have both.
      - vkou 10y ago
        If personal possession and consumption stopped being a crime, that would effectively end the War on Drugs overnight. That kind of drug policy would make the current state of affairs unrecognizable. (Yes, I am well aware of how in the current legal framework, anyone can be accused of being a dealer.) The FDA approach to regulation goes after dealers and manufacturers - not their customers. So yes, we absolutely can end the War on Drugs, and keep the FDA's enforcement mechanisms. I honestly have a lot more sympathy for an addict, or a bystander, whose life was destroyed by the state, then I do for his heroin dealer. I think most people opposing the War on Drugs on grounds other then ideological anarcho-capitalism share this assessment.
        snrplfth 10y ago
        > If personal possession and consumption stopped being a crime, that would effectively end the War on Drugs overnight. Well, sure, the current way it's being done. But you'd still have cartel warfare for selling territory, adulterated goods, and to effectively shut down distributors, you'd have to define smaller and smaller amounts of substance as qualifying for "dealing", as dealers learned what they could and couldn't get away with. Perhaps I should not have used the capital-letter "War on Drugs" to refer to this. But you would still have much of what you have now. Now, would it be net improvement if enforcement of drug laws moved towards a dealers-and-manufacturers model? Sure, I think so. But my point is that there would still be no principle in place preventing that model from expanding again into a broader prohibition, involving new substances, posessions, uses, or what have you. It would be like saying "we'll have free speech, except if it's bad, or we don't like the person saying it, or some other reason that we might think up later." There's no sufficiently strong principle preventing prohibitions from continually increasing. > I honestly have a lot more sympathy for an addict, or a bystander, whose life was destroyed by the state, then I do for his heroin dealer. I think most people opposing the War on Drugs on grounds other then ideological anarcho-capitalism share this assessment. That's probably true. However, I don't think sympathy is an effective basis for judging whether things should be legal. And if observing that a government with an expansive power to ban things will probably use and aggrandize that power makes me an anarcho-capitalist (rather than, say, just a boring classical liberal) then so be it.
chillwaves 10y ago
> Either the government should have the power to ban drugs or it shouldn't Surely there is middle ground. A drug can be regulated but not banned. The way a drug is prescribed could be regulated. This needs to happen with opiates. That doesn't mean they should be banned but the addiction potential is very serious for these drugs (and vastly underestimated when they first entered the market).
- snrplfth 10y ago
  "Regulated but not banned" is not a middle ground between "banned or not". It is "not banned". I am not saying that you can't have regulations on a drug, I am saying that if you make a drug entirely illegal, and it is in sufficiently high demand, then you will have drug-war-type effects.
maxerickson 10y ago
I think there are a large number of people that simply want a different mix of prohibition and enforcement than we have today. It doesn't take a whole lot of doublethink to want laws around marijuana relaxed while at the same time preferring to keep the FDA.
- snrplfth 10y ago
  Okay, but what I'm saying is that once the tools are in place to ban various substances for personal consumption, and make those bans stick through enforcement, then that's all the tools you need for a War on Drugs. I mean, at that point, it's just "ban this thing, and not that thing, because it's what I want." What takes doublethink is imagining that, once these powers are in place, they won't be used against one's preferred substances.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    In practice the War on Drugs has involved arresting and imprisoning a lot of people and the militarization of police. How many people are in prison for violating FDA rulings? I'm sure there are a few, but policing egregious behavior is probably a step that a reasonable society takes out onto that slippery slope of having rules about a thing.
    - snrplfth 10y ago
      Let me try to clarify: if you have rules prohibiting the creation and sale of substances solely for personal consumption by competent, consenting adults, then you have the primary tool needed to conduct a War on Drugs. I think that it is a mistaken notion to imagine creating this power, and saying "don't worry, we'll only ban dangerous things, and not harmless things, because we'll know better." I think that is definitely not the case. Yes, many people want a different mix of things banned and permitted. But people should not fool themselves into thinking that is what they will get, because a power like that is pretty much always used for more things than its creators intend. We cannot simultaneously prohibit things, and not enforce that prohibition through, ultimately, threats of imprisonment. If the maximum penalty for a drug charge is a ticket, then the prohibition on drugs will simply not be effective. The War on Drugs has involved arresting and imprisoning a lot of people, because a lot of people really want drugs. Once the soft enforcement mechanisms (reprimands, misdemeanors, fines of legitimate businesses) fail, then if you really want to suppress the act, you have to ramp up the level of force. The reason that fewer people are imprisoned under FDA rulings is, I would say, because the FDA is more lenient, and because the things it bans are far more niche and less desired. You can have effective, or you can have gentle, but you cannot have both.

vkou 10y ago

The FDA bans drugs from making unverified medical claims. That's the raison d'etre for its existence. Given the circumstances, they do a pretty damn good job of this. You can put whatever the hell you want in your non-FDA-approved snake oil supplement - but then you won't have the legitimacy of the medical establishment behind you. This legitimacy depends on your drug having verifiable, understood effects. You can't have it both ways.

snrplfth 10y ago
Well, they still destroy unapproved drugs at the border and raid places like whole milk producers and nutritional supplement makers. It's not exactly "caveat emptor" over at the FDA. My point is really that, if somebody's solution to the problem of people overdosing on drugs is to ban them or prohibit access, then they're defacto acquiescing to the tools that make the War on Drugs possible. People seem to expect drugs they don't like to just "go away", without any of the nasty raiding and shooting.
- vkou 10y ago
  There are plenty of snake oil manufacturers who manage to operate within the boundaries of the law. Those don't get raided. The milk salesman wasn't raided for selling whole milk. He was raided for selling unpasteurized milk... Across state lines. Generally speaking, clearing the bar for FDA tolerance of nutritional supplements is quite easy. They don't care that your product works, only that you don't put actively dangerous things in it. It's caveat emptor for efficiency, but not for safety - which is a pretty reasonable place to draw the line.
  - snrplfth 10y ago
    I understand that, yes. But what I am saying is that, even with a "safety" criterion, the War on Drugs is completely prosecutable. Heck, alcohol is dangerous as hell, as evidenced by the number of deaths it precipitates. There is nearly always a safety criterion that can be thought up for "products for personal consumption" (as opposed to, say, environmental pollutants) You can have prohibition of "unsafe substances", or you can have an end to the War on Drugs. I don't think you can have both.
    - vkou 10y ago
      If personal possession and consumption stopped being a crime, that would effectively end the War on Drugs overnight. That kind of drug policy would make the current state of affairs unrecognizable. (Yes, I am well aware of how in the current legal framework, anyone can be accused of being a dealer.) The FDA approach to regulation goes after dealers and manufacturers - not their customers. So yes, we absolutely can end the War on Drugs, and keep the FDA's enforcement mechanisms. I honestly have a lot more sympathy for an addict, or a bystander, whose life was destroyed by the state, then I do for his heroin dealer. I think most people opposing the War on Drugs on grounds other then ideological anarcho-capitalism share this assessment.
      - snrplfth 10y ago
        > If personal possession and consumption stopped being a crime, that would effectively end the War on Drugs overnight. Well, sure, the current way it's being done. But you'd still have cartel warfare for selling territory, adulterated goods, and to effectively shut down distributors, you'd have to define smaller and smaller amounts of substance as qualifying for "dealing", as dealers learned what they could and couldn't get away with. Perhaps I should not have used the capital-letter "War on Drugs" to refer to this. But you would still have much of what you have now. Now, would it be net improvement if enforcement of drug laws moved towards a dealers-and-manufacturers model? Sure, I think so. But my point is that there would still be no principle in place preventing that model from expanding again into a broader prohibition, involving new substances, posessions, uses, or what have you. It would be like saying "we'll have free speech, except if it's bad, or we don't like the person saying it, or some other reason that we might think up later." There's no sufficiently strong principle preventing prohibitions from continually increasing. > I honestly have a lot more sympathy for an addict, or a bystander, whose life was destroyed by the state, then I do for his heroin dealer. I think most people opposing the War on Drugs on grounds other then ideological anarcho-capitalism share this assessment. That's probably true. However, I don't think sympathy is an effective basis for judging whether things should be legal. And if observing that a government with an expansive power to ban things will probably use and aggrandize that power makes me an anarcho-capitalist (rather than, say, just a boring classical liberal) then so be it.

chillwaves 10y ago

> Either the government should have the power to ban drugs or it shouldn't Surely there is middle ground. A drug can be regulated but not banned. The way a drug is prescribed could be regulated. This needs to happen with opiates. That doesn't mean they should be banned but the addiction potential is very serious for these drugs (and vastly underestimated when they first entered the market).

snrplfth 10y ago
"Regulated but not banned" is not a middle ground between "banned or not". It is "not banned". I am not saying that you can't have regulations on a drug, I am saying that if you make a drug entirely illegal, and it is in sufficiently high demand, then you will have drug-war-type effects.

maxerickson 10y ago

I think there are a large number of people that simply want a different mix of prohibition and enforcement than we have today. It doesn't take a whole lot of doublethink to want laws around marijuana relaxed while at the same time preferring to keep the FDA.

snrplfth 10y ago
Okay, but what I'm saying is that once the tools are in place to ban various substances for personal consumption, and make those bans stick through enforcement, then that's all the tools you need for a War on Drugs. I mean, at that point, it's just "ban this thing, and not that thing, because it's what I want." What takes doublethink is imagining that, once these powers are in place, they won't be used against one's preferred substances.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  In practice the War on Drugs has involved arresting and imprisoning a lot of people and the militarization of police. How many people are in prison for violating FDA rulings? I'm sure there are a few, but policing egregious behavior is probably a step that a reasonable society takes out onto that slippery slope of having rules about a thing.
  - snrplfth 10y ago
    Let me try to clarify: if you have rules prohibiting the creation and sale of substances solely for personal consumption by competent, consenting adults, then you have the primary tool needed to conduct a War on Drugs. I think that it is a mistaken notion to imagine creating this power, and saying "don't worry, we'll only ban dangerous things, and not harmless things, because we'll know better." I think that is definitely not the case. Yes, many people want a different mix of things banned and permitted. But people should not fool themselves into thinking that is what they will get, because a power like that is pretty much always used for more things than its creators intend. We cannot simultaneously prohibit things, and not enforce that prohibition through, ultimately, threats of imprisonment. If the maximum penalty for a drug charge is a ticket, then the prohibition on drugs will simply not be effective. The War on Drugs has involved arresting and imprisoning a lot of people, because a lot of people really want drugs. Once the soft enforcement mechanisms (reprimands, misdemeanors, fines of legitimate businesses) fail, then if you really want to suppress the act, you have to ramp up the level of force. The reason that fewer people are imprisoned under FDA rulings is, I would say, because the FDA is more lenient, and because the things it bans are far more niche and less desired. You can have effective, or you can have gentle, but you cannot have both.